Best Roon Setup?

Seems like the simplest config would connect the exaSound Play Point directly to ethernet at one end and to your amp/receiver at the other. The e38 has a more advanced DAC chip, but otherwise, isn’t it redundant with the PlayPoint? Anyway, the Play Point does not seem to have either digital outputs or a USB-B input, so how would you chain the two together? If you do want to use the e38, then if I’m not mistaken, you’d need to feed it from a different streamer (not the Play Point). No?

Either way, I’d probably connect a USB hard drive (or internal SSD card if available?) directly to the Play Point. To me, it seems like a separate NAS unnecessarily complicates things. For its $8499 price, the Play Point seems to get you pretty close to a one-box solution (Roon Core + streamer + DAC + pre-amp).

Your Option B is close.

It’s that pesky USB connection that will steal a little bit of love out of your listening experience. Look for a Roon Endpoint with a real digital audio output (I2S, AES/EBU, S/PDIF, AES3id) and be blown away.

Or possibly better, a DAC with an internal Roon Endpoint. (Ethernet in)

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PlayPoint Mark I or Mark II or DM?

I’m guessing though that you really want the multi-channel e38 in the chain. If so, then. in descending order, obviously imho,

Exasound Server (delta, or, gamma if you really need it) to Exasound e38
PlayPoint MK II to Exasound e38

Music internal to the Delta, via USB hard drive or on a NAS with the MKII.
The DM unlike the other Exasound servers or previous Play Points, seems to be an all in one (Roon Core/DAC) solution with no option to chain to another DAC. Given that the PlayPoint MK II and the Delta servers are also Roon Cores, you don’t need a NUC.

Thats a lot of fact crammed into that sentence! :wink:
Some of us actually prefer USB for both qualitative and versatility reasons.

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Hi, Kanet.

2 Roon Input Setup:

My Headphone set-up is NuPrime-DAC 10H (roon ready: DAC + Head Phone Amp + Pre-Amp) with AKG K812 Headphones to listen horizontally!?

So, What? The 2016 bought NuPrime is connected via a Supra USB cable direct from a NUC roon core AND also via Coax from an ethernet IN roon endpoint Streamer. Switching between sources (loudness/pressure appeared to be the same) from this simple set-up COAX was clearly more detailed and open.

So, What2: I wonder if USB DAC implementation has vastly improved since 2016 (I think it might have) OR is SPIDF still King OR does a streamer with AES/Coax/Opt/i2S/BNC out present a better signal to the DAC.

So, What3: In this real-world example ‘B’ sounds better. I found the same for Chord and PS-Audio DAC’s (non-headphone). If your endpoint/DAC have SPIDF - try that and see, it may surprise you?

(With PS-Audio I found ethernet to internal ‘Bridge card’ sounds best).

The “U” absolutely does stand for Universal.

Many builders find it easier to implement an XMOS USB chip than to design a proper digital audio signal chain. So in many devices, USB beats the other flavors of digital audio signals.

Here’s the typical (simplified block diagram) approach of developing a Roon Endpoint for Digital Audio output:

And here’s one for USB:

In the USB one, there’s a translation (with clocking) to and from USB. Why? Would anyone invent this approach if they had it all to do again? Probably not. (And if so, are there possibly even better approaches with even more translations? I know, philosophy, not science, but still useful) The USB is there precisely because it’s “Universal.” And when “computer audio” was coming of age, it was easy to sell DACs with USB in, since it was easy to get USB out of a “computer.” It took the rest of us some more time to build devices that accept Ethernet in, then clock that audio data to a pristine digital audio out.

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Hi,
I am using a Matrix X-SPDIF 2 between my Roon core (NUC) and DAC (directstream) to transform USB to I2S. Does X-SPDIF 2 means a Roon endpoint?
Or any other endpoint suggestions?
Thanks!

I personaly think this is the best way to connect Roon:

but you need a I2S Bridge card and a I2S DAC…

http://www.modelpromo.nl/PinkFaun-I2S-Bridge.htm

A second option could be a Mac laptop with Roon installed directly connected with USB to a good USB DAC, the benefit is that the audio doesn’t have to travel over ethernet, and the speed of the local storage SSD outperforms a slow NAS,

I believe that fast local storage on SSD or NMe is better than a slow and noisy harddisk in NAS…

Hi.
Im. Using a qnap nas drive as the roon core. Which sends music data to a network streamer then on to the dsc.

That way roon is always on. And therefore no need to have a pc or mac running 24/7 as the core. Ive found the response in finding and playing music a lot quicker. So very happy with the results and S/Q.
Hope this helps

That’s exactly what I also meant, (see above graphic)
By installing ROON on your NAS (Synology or QNAP) you have created a “DAS” streaming solution

(DAS means “Direct Attached Storage” or Local Storage)
That means for ROON server the storage where your music is stored is now “locally”
Local storage is much faster, than network attached storage that goes over ethernet.
And I think it sound much better this way.

Installing ROON on very fast SSD even improves the sound, in the future (when SSD storage will be cheaper) I am going to build a audio PC with lots of local storage on SSD.

I am running ROON on NAS for some time, and I am very happy with it.
(I have installed ROON on a seperate SSD that’s in the NAS)

There is a lot of well intentioned misinformation being offered in this thread.

A well designed DAC will sound perfectly fine over USB as it will have in built noise filtering and an accurate internal master clock telling the source how fast to send it bits. With such a dac it will make little difference whether it is plugged in directly to a computer or a network streamer such as raspberry pi or allo usbridge.

Now it is definitely correct that fan noise can be a problem so that may factor in to your decision making.

What many people don’t realise is that dacs have been improving so much over the last few years that they are definitely now a commodity item. It’s Moore’s law in action. You can get an extremely respectable dac for US$200 that renders any consideration of expensive linear power supplies, reclockers, cables etc redundant.

You do not need to worry about I2S or spdif. Just read the dac reviews over at audiosciencereview.com. Make sure you choose a good USB dac and then plug it in directly to your Roon server or via a streamer.

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My dac can accept S/PDIF, I2S and also USB
And I hear a huge difference between those connections,
S/PDIF sounds warmer, softer, where I2S has the same but with much more details, and better imaging
and most important better timing, it’s difficult to explain but the quiet moments on music sound much better controlled.

USB sounds also dynamic, with good details but these details are nervous, and it sounds a bit un-natural
in my ears
But don’t forget I have very good (and analytical) High-End speakers (of 7000 euro a set)

If a listener has standard hifi speakers he or she will probably not able to hear these differences…

It is all relative, and what applies for one, does not have to apply to the other, everyone must listen with their own ears (it is not a story of good and bad, but it’s all about discovering what you find the most beautiful sounding, and what I wrote above were my own personal experiences

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Question: did you ever listened to a I2S DAC?
What were your experiences?

do you have any info to support that claim?

Yes the force is strong on this one, it’s almost hard to read

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so your advice is to place a noisy nas right next to a dac? or is your advice to run an i2s connection to a different room? :rofl: i2s is an internal connection between ic’s it can be used external but should be a very short connection.

Edit: nevermind, some bad reading from my part… :woozy_face:

My NAS is in the mains cabinet in the hall
which is connected to Gigabit Ethernet to the Roon Endpoints

I have two:
One Hifiberry DAC +
and the other is a selfmade passive cooled PC with a Pink Faun I2S card
connected to Audio-Gd Master 7 DAC.
So I am not bothered by the noise from the NAS

My advice is not to put the NAS next to your DAC and speakers,
but to install ROON directly on your NAS
(if your NAS is suitable for this, the CPU must be powerfull enough)

If you have a ROON endpoint that supports “I2S out” then it must be placed
be very close to your DAC.
the closer the better, because I2S over HDMI does not support long lengths
(30 to 50 cm max, I would advise)
My cable is 50 cm an I have no problems with it.

But maybe an even better solution is this beautiful DAC from Dutch soil:

This DAC is ROON endpoint and I2S DAC in one device
I have heard the 4 deck version of this DAC and it sounds very beautiful!

The advantage of this DAC is that you can put it anywhere in the room, and
enjoy the benefits of I2S and ROON

Thank you for this post. This is really relevant to me. I would like ideally to buy a Roon Nucleus (even if the price tag is too high IMO) to connect it straight to my DAC via USB cable and stream Tidal/Qobuz. I did not pull the trigger yet because there a lot of rumors about it sounding better if connected to a streamer and then to a DAC or to a Roon endpoint and then to a DAC, if it is so it is losing all the appeal. In the hifi hobby there is this tendency to overdo, overgrow and complicate and this is something I did in the past but I am following a new goal for the future: less is more and the equipment must adapt to lifestyle and not viceversa (a bit like Design). Can somebody explain without entering in too technical details? Many many thanks

As you will have gathered from this thread, there are basically two main camps: a Roon Core connected directly to a DAC (via USB) versus a Roon Core connected via ethernet to an endpoint, connected to a DAC vis USB.

The latter view is definitely boosted by the Roon Labs Knowledge Base article on getting the best sound quality, which plumps for the ethernet option.

However, I think it is worth bearing in mind that the article was first written long before the Nucleus was available. At that time, Roon existed solely as software, which had to be installed on a computer. As most computers have noisy mechanical devices (fans and hard drives), it was a no-brainer to banish the computer running the Roon Core from the listening room and use ethernet to connect the Core with the endpoint in the listening room.

Roon Labs also have a companion article on running Roon in one computer, and there again they say it is not their preferred option. But again, they are not talking about their Nucleus appliance, they are talking about using a general-purpose computer to host the complete Roon software all-in-one package.

The Nucleus was announced in May 2017, and became available early in 2018. That is designed from the ground up to do one thing only, and to do it well: be a Roon Core and Endpoint appliance.

I would argue that with the introduction of the Nucleus (and also using ROCK with a [ optionally fanless] NUC), separating the Core from the Endpoint via ethernet becomes much less of a necessity to achieve excellent sound quality. I would be willing to bet that a proper blind testing of the two configurations (Nucleus -> USB -> DAC versus Nucleus -> ethernet -> endpoint -> DAC) would be very difficult to distinguish for most, if not the majority of people. I know that I would certainly fail, but then I don’t claim to have golden ears either.

I actually have a foot in both worlds - my NUC is directly connected to my DAC (a Denon AVR) using HDMI; but I also have endpoints connected via ethernet for other systems. That’s the thing about the Roon architecture - you can keep it simple, or you can grow it to encompass other configurations.

And lastly, the technical bit: check that your DAC will work with a Linux OS (what ROCK OS is based on). Some older DACs do not, and only have software drivers for Windows or MacOS.

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In prior posts both Roon and DCS have said Ethernet provides the best quality signal/sound.

@Rugby
For those who have a DCS Rossini DAC, which has Ethernet in, isn’t this the best (and simplest):

Nucleus+ to Ethernet
Ethernet to DCS Rossini
Done.

?